Good news on the £400 discount offered by the chancellor today. Just been reading an article that says:

How this discount gets applied will depend on how you get your electricity and gas.

If you pay with a direct debit, which 69% of Brits do, the £400 will be divided up and a portion of it will be deducted from your bill every month. 

Is the £400 going to be paid out over a year if you’re on a direct debit?

Posted by: @editor

Good news on the £400 discount offered by the chancellor today. Just been reading an article that says:

How this discount gets applied will depend on how you get your electricity and gas.

If you pay with a direct debit, which 69% of Brits do, the £400 will be divided up and a portion of it will be deducted from your bill every month. 

 

Is the £400 going to be paid out over a year if you’re on a direct debit?

All households in England, Scotland and Wales connected to the electricity mains (around 28 million) will get a non-repayable grant to help towards the cost of energy bills from October. This £400 payment will be spread over six months off your direct debit - it won't be paid as a lump sum.

I assume that those on prepayment (I have family in such a position) will receive a voucher that can be used to top up. Or it will be applied to the smart meter automatically OTA.

Thanks @jeff. When is that set to commence? I’ll watch my account and ensure that we get a £66 credit for six months. I don’t trust E.ON at all.

@editor I believe its due in October - after the low months and when the cap changes

All this £400 discount does is reduce the effect of the coming Autumn price increase. It does nothing to offset last April's price hike, which is the current issue.

Posted by: @prjohn

All this £400 discount does is reduce the effect of the coming Autumn price increase. It does nothing to offset last April's price hike, which is the current issue.

Agreed. So we need to be more adventurous in our thinking.

The UK imports very little Russian fossil fuel. Source: House of Commons Library briefing; 13may22.

But until we import zero we are still subject to the high prices occurring on EpexSpot, the European energy trading platform.

So how much short-term borrowing would be required to eradicate all Russian imports, and instead use 'large' domestic storage batteries (14kW+) to suck in the renewable energy we already generate?

What about HMG implementing this by targeting the poorest households on pre-payment meters? They could subsidise widespread storage battery installation via the major housing associations.

Even households who don't get a battery would still benefit, because our electricity costs will fall/stabilise without the affects of Russian fuels.

Such a strategy might cost no more than another 'discount' from the Chancellor in 2023. That government borrowing might very well pay for itself rapidly.

I'm afraid subsidising everyone's energy bills is not the answer, and also is not sustainable in the long term. I fully agree that those who are really struggling should get help, but not the ones who can afford to pay their bills (me included). This money will have to come from higher taxes on us, our children or even our grandchildren in the future, or by government borrowing which could make the cost even higher.

The first line of attack should be improving energy efficiency, since not requiring the energy in the first place has so many benefits it is a total no brainer.

Someone (probably an astro-physicist who got bored waiting for the next planet killing asteroid to arrive) once calculated that the quantity of energy arriving at the Earth from the Sun each second of every day was sufficient to supply all the needs of us energy hungry humans for a full year. So each year we receive approximately 31.5 million times more energy than we require, but we are just very bad at capturing and storing it efficiently. I fully agree with Transparent, Batalto and others in the need to encourage home battery storage, but the Government in their wisdom are concentrating on solar PV (again), but not necessarily energy storage. I personally feel that they have got this the wrong way round, having more flexible energy storage would reduce the need for renewable generation along with reducing fossil fuel generation, both of which would help in mitigating the need for extensive improvements to the grid infrastructure, all of which should help create energy independence and keep down the costs.

Could we please have someone put in charge who has more than a slight sprinkling of common sense.

On the subject of energy storage, I was pricing up some Pylontech LiFePo4 rack stuff from Aliexpress, man it's cheap nowadays!

Posted by: @derek-m

 This money will have to come from higher taxes on us, our children or even our grandchildren in the future, or by government borrowing which could make the cost even higher.

 

This is a common myth that government investment and/or spending comes from taxes. The government owns the BoE and is also the currency owner and issuer thus cannot be indebted to itself. This website is not the place to debate this but it is sufficient to say that the government can raise the money if it so wishes. 

Posted by: @prjohn

Posted by: @derek-m

 This money will have to come from higher taxes on us, our children or even our grandchildren in the future, or by government borrowing which could make the cost even higher.

 

This is a common myth that government investment and/or spending comes from taxes. The government owns the BoE and is also the currency owner and issuer thus cannot be indebted to itself. This website is not the place to debate this but it is sufficient to say that the government can raise the money if it so wishes. 

That's great news prjohn, so the Government can abolish all the taxes since they are surplus to requirements. That will solve the energy crises and cost of living crises at a single stroke.

Posted by: @derek-m

Posted by: @prjohn

Posted by: @derek-m

 This money will have to come from higher taxes on us, our children or even our grandchildren in the future, or by government borrowing which could make the cost even higher.

 

This is a common myth that government investment and/or spending comes from taxes. The government owns the BoE and is also the currency owner and issuer thus cannot be indebted to itself. This website is not the place to debate this but it is sufficient to say that the government can raise the money if it so wishes. 

That's great news prjohn, so the Government can abolish all the taxes since they are surplus to requirements. That will solve the energy crises and cost of living crises at a single stroke.

No, I didn't say that. If you really want to know how government spending works there is a considerable amount of information on the internet. Also, how did the government raise the funding for Covid spending? It wasn't through borrowing.